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A mirror stood right in front of him, above a sink. To his right, several toilet stalls. Above him, a flickering strip light. The walls were coloured a light blue, without much ornamentation other than a poster asking employees to please wash their hands.\n\nIt took Simon several seconds to realise he should be confused that he woke up [i]standing up[/i].\n\nThe orange face of Fortis resolved itself in place of his own in the mirror. “Oh man dude I am so sorry I know I promised I'd never- but, you were bleeding so much I had to...” Simon reached up to touch the bandage wrapped around his head. The back of his head still felt tender. “But, you're... going to be fine. Right? You only got hit on the... most... important part of your body. You... uh...”\n\nSimon frowned a bit, reaching out to touch the mirror. “What are you talking about?” he asked his imaginary friend softly.\n\n“I... took control of your body. You wouldn't wake up, but you weren't asleep and I was still awake so I... Oh man, dude, we need to get to a doctor.”\n\n“...Fortis. You're my imaginary friend. Right? I mean... I [i]know[/i] you're not real.” Fortis looked slightly hurt. “How could you... like. This doesn't make any sense. Maybe I got delirious from hitting my head, or-”\n\n“Simon. [i]Doctor[/i]. Got it? I found a mirror. We can talk on the way. And I charged your PET so you can use the map so you don't get lost again.” Simon found a makeup mirror in his pocket, a round clamshell design. On opening it, he found it was engraved – the name 'Elizabeth' was faintly visible on the inside of the clamshell.\n\nSimon nodded his head firmly as Fortis's face replaced his own in the mirror. “Okay. Doctor.”\n\n* * *\n\nSimon was glad he hadn't broken his MusicMKR in the fall off the school roof. Or the fight with those zombie... things. Strumming at it in ukulele mode helped keep him calm as he followed the holographic map his PET projected in front of him.\n\nIt was dark out. Gone midnight, surely, although Simon felt relatively well-rested. It was very different, seeing Locksmouth like this. There were lights everywhere, of course, making it still quite easy to navigate, but the sky was an inky black dotted with what looked like thousands of stars.\n\n“Hey Fortis, shouldn't there be... less stars?” Simon asked the mirror taped to the side of his PET. “Doesn't having lots of light at night, like, drown it out or something?”\n\n“I'unno. You're the [i]real person[/i] here,” Fortis responded.\n\nIt took Simon almost half a minute to realise something was wrong. “Fortis, are you okay?” Simon could see Fortis's face in the mirror – a perfect reflection of Simon's own, although instead of brown and white fur, Fortis simply had shiny, inklike skin, neon orange in colour. His eyes, when open, were a shiny, violently vibrant green.\n\n“Oh, no, it's nothing. I'm just an [i]alien[/i], not a [i]real person[/i], why should my feelings matter?” the reflection responded. \n\nThis gave Simon pause. His sneakers continued to thump along the grassy path as he thought of a response. “Why would my imaginary friend be an alien?”\n\n“Well for a start there's no reason your imaginary friend [i]couldn't[/i] be an alien. The entire point is they can be anything!” Fortis responded, sounding agitated. “Si, look, I'm...” He gave a sigh. “It was easier just letting you think I was an imaginary friend. You seemed so happy to have one! I'd hoped I'd never have to... tell you the truth. That they wouldn't find me here.”\n\nThey came to a crossroads. Checking his map, Simon took a right, heading further toward the middle of the dome. Simon noticed that the buildings were getting shorter. Was that because they were getting closer to the inner ringway?\n\n“About, like, ten years ago, I found this planet while running away from my kind's... uh, queen, I guess? I didn't want to be a soldier anymore. I came here, and... I guess instinctively I just grabbed the, um, the closest person I could find. We [i]need[/i] hosts in this dimension, y'know? So I just kinda...”\n\nFortis trailed off. “Look, I'm sorry. I should've... just [i]taking[/i] hosts was what we were used to, yeah? It was hard to... break the habit?”\n\nSimon stopped. For a moment Fortis thought something was wrong before realising they had just reached their destination. Above them, a large sign read 'Locksmouth Medical Centre'. “Oh. The hospital,” said Simon. “We've been here before, right?”\n\n“Uh... I think so? You got clipped by a car that one time. Mom went mad worrying, but you didn't even need dermal regeneration or anything. C'mon, let's go. There's probably someone still on call right now, right?”\n\n* * *\n\nThe doors took a bit of work to open. They were supposed to open automatically, but there was no power. The lack of power extended to the lights inside the hospital, as well. Simon bunched up his shoulders as he entered, using his PET as a flashlight. “H-hello?”\n\nHis tentative greeting was swallowed up by the darkness. This place seemed huge to Simon. The distance from the door to the front desk he could barely see in the gloom, even with the light from his PET, seemed like a gaping chasm. He couldn't see the floor except right in front of him, so for all he knew it could be a gaping chasm – he'd seen enough today to just assume anything was likely.\n\nCarefully, tentatively, Simon made his way over to the desk, making sure to illuminate the ground ahead of him as he did. He tried to just focus on what was ahead of him, ignoring his periphery. No scary darkness here, no sir.\n\nAfter what felt like an age, he ran into the check in desk at the other side of the room, grasping it as if for dear life. His heart was racing. What was wrong with him? He wasn't afraid of the dark! Being afraid of the dark was stupid. After all, there was no such thing as monsters-\n\nOh. Okay.\n\nSimon gave himself a few minutes to calm down. He tried those breathing exercises his therapist had suggested. Breathe in. Count to three. Breathe out. They usually seemed to work. He didn't want to close his eyes, though, so they just kept darting around the dark room as he worked on calming himself down.\n\nHis eyes stopped at the screen of the check in terminal next to him. It was on! Had it been on when he got here? Surely he'd have noticed the light. On the screen, blinking, was a chat window. Did hospital computers usually have IM programs on them? Wouldn't the doctors just use their PETs?\n\n--- \n[b]Rubberfly:[/b] Hey, kid!\n[b]Rubberfly:[/b] Take the stairs to your left, up two flights, take a right, third door on your left.\n[b]Rubberfly:[/b] Hurry up! One of those purple things is down the hall!\n---\n\nSimon stared at the screen for a few moments.\n\n---\n[b]Rubberfly:[/b] I'm serious, get a move on!\n---\n\nSimon quickly swiveled in place, and bolted for the stairs.\n\n* * *\n\nThe journey up the stairs was a harrowing one. Not only were the lights still out, but Simon could swear he heard muffled screams and shuffling feet behind every door. His hand clutched the railing as he climbed, counting the steps even though he didn't know how many there were meant to be. He kept his light off, so as not to attract any monsters.\n\nStumbling onto the second landing, Simon hurried over to the door and opened it a crack to peek through. He strained his ears, tilting them around as far as they would go, and squinted into the darkness.\n\nAfter what felt like more than a minute – although his PET insisted was only ten seconds – Simon made a break for it, bolting through the door and heading left – before quickly doubling back and heading right instead. He counted doors.\n\nOne.\n\nTwo.\n\nThree. That one!\n\nAnd, slam! He ran headlong into it. It didn't even budge.\nSimon stood there in horror. Had... had he gotten the wrong door? He was just about to turn and run back down to the computer to check when the door flung itself open and a pair of grey arms grabbed Simon and dragged him in!\n\nSimon felt that strange, dreamlike feeling again as he saw the gray limbs wrap around him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that weird inklike substance creeping up his own arms... but, wait, it was orange. What?\n\nHe heard a confused gasp. “Gah! Kid, calm the heck down, okay?” Looking up, he saw a face with pure yellow eyes and... wait. Didn't those grey things have black eyes? Or grey eyes? Not yellow, he was pretty sure. And they didn't have black hair with red highlights. And they didn't have gigantic-\n\nOkay well maybe some of them had gigantic boobs.\n\n“Shelly Iverson??” Simon said incredulously. \n\n“In the rubbery matte grey flesh!” the butterfly responded with a slight grin, before promptly letting him go. She leaned close. “I don't think anyone saw it but don't, like... 'ink over' like that around these guys, okay?” Simon just gave her a confused look, trying his darndest to look her in those pretty compound eyes instead of her cleavage.\n\nSimon opened his mouth to respond, before a scraping of metal against tiles made him whip around to face the door again – only to see it was just a giant wall of green muscle moving something very heavy in front of the door. It took Simon a few steps back to realise the person he was staring at was a crocodile.\n\nWhen the crocodile noticed Simon was staring, he gave a cheery thumbs-up. “Nothing's getting past [i]that[/i], kid.” Simon offered a shaky, forced smile. He could see the man's eyes flick to the green band around Simon's left arm.\n\nEven Simon could recognise the awkward split-second pause. \n\nIt was something he got a lot. The moment people realise they were meant to treat him differently, they always took a few moments to readjust their mental gears. He knew, intellectually, that they were trying to be nice. He still hated it.\n\nSimon took a deep breath, then took in his surroundings. This looked like a doctor's office, all right. There was a desk in the corner, with a terminal and many, many drawers. The metal object blocking the door was a cabinet of some sort, although it was facing the door so he couldn't see what was in it. There were four people here – Shelly Iverson, that huge crocodile, a bat lady, and a rabbit guy. Teenager? Young adult? He couldn't tell.\n\nThat bat lady looked familiar...\n\n“D-doctor?” Simon attempted, hesitating. Oh God no it couldn't be her, it had to just be another bat lady who was coincidentally inside a hospital-\n\n“Hm?” Dr. Diane Masterson looked up from her PET. “Oh! I'm so sorry, I didn't even notice- yes, hello. Dr. Masterson. What was your name again?”\n\n“S-Simon, ma'am,” he responded, standing up straighter. “Um. I, um.” Simon closed his eyes and took a breath. “So my school got attacked by monsters and I fell off the roof but I was fine and I ran away and I came to the place where all the officers are and those grey people came out of nowhere and they grabbed me and I shouted at them and they let go of me and I fell and hit my head on a rock and I woke up and it was dark and I think I have a concussion because my head really hurts and isn't it a bad sign if you pass out after hitting your head so I-”\n\n“Woah! Slow down!” the doctor exclaimed, causing Simon to immediately shut his mouth. Everyone was staring at him. His ears droops and he slouched down a bit, trying to make himself smaller.\n\n“You hit your head and passed out?” Simon nodded. “Okay. You were right to come find me. You seem fine to me, but we should check anyway. Could you take a seat?”\n\nSimon nodded his head again, sitting in the chair next to the desk and trying not to look at anyone. She reached into a desk drawer, rummaged around, and then closed it again. She frowned. “This... isn't actually my office. I'm sure he keeps it somewhere...” Another drawer, another rummage. “Ah-HA.” The doctor retrieved a matte black device, around the dimensions of a deck of playing cards.\n\nWith an almost-imperceptible 'snap' – Simon was confident only he and the doctor even had the aural range to hear it – the doctor separated the device into eight separate plates. “Sit up, please,” the doctor prompted, holding up two of the plates next to Simon's head. As her hands came away, Simon flinched, expecting them to drop – but they just hovered there an inch away from his temples.\n\nReaching up with another pair, she left them floating under the back of his skull. The third pair found themselves hovering near his crown, while the final pair were set hovering behind the top of the rear of his skull.\n\n“Hold still, please,” the doctor continued, as she tapped something into her PET's screen. The floating 'cards' began to rotate slowly. Simon sat stock still for what felt like hours, but the process only really took a minute to complete. The doctor deftly removed the 'cards' from their positions as she looked at the results on her PET.\n\n“Hmm. I'd have to run this through the mainframe to be totally sure, but from what I can see you have some... let's call it 'bruising'. A few cells deep... Nothing serious. You're fine, sweetie.” The doctor gave him her most reassuring smile. “If you'd left it another eight hours I wouldn't have been able to tell anything was wrong.”\n\nSimon sighed with relief, flopping down in the chair and finally taking his eyes off the doctor – only to notice the rabbit man – not a teenager now that he had a better look – was only about a foot away, looking at him with an expression Simon couldn't read.\n\n“So you said a bunch of those grey zombie things grabbed you, you [i]yelled[/i] at them and they [i]let you go[/i]... right?” Simon nodded. “And when you woke up... they were gone, huh?” Simon gave another nod, tilting his head slightly in confusion.\n\nThe rabbit leaned in close. “So... how do we know you're not infected?”\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "Simon woke up in an unfamiliar place.

He looked around himself in confusion. A mirror stood right in front of him, above a sink. To his right, several toilet stalls. Above him, a flickering strip light. The walls were coloured a light blue, without much ornamentation other than a poster asking employees to please wash their hands.

It took Simon several seconds to realise he should be confused that he woke up standing up.

The orange face of Fortis resolved itself in place of his own in the mirror. “Oh man dude I am so sorry I know I promised I'd never- but, you were bleeding so much I had to...” Simon reached up to touch the bandage wrapped around his head. The back of his head still felt tender. “But, you're... going to be fine. Right? You only got hit on the... most... important part of your body. You... uh...”

Simon frowned a bit, reaching out to touch the mirror. “What are you talking about?” he asked his imaginary friend softly.

“I... took control of your body. You wouldn't wake up, but you weren't asleep and I was still awake so I... Oh man, dude, we need to get to a doctor.”

“...Fortis. You're my imaginary friend. Right? I mean... I know you're not real.” Fortis looked slightly hurt. “How could you... like. This doesn't make any sense. Maybe I got delirious from hitting my head, or-”

“Simon. Doctor. Got it? I found a mirror. We can talk on the way. And I charged your PET so you can use the map so you don't get lost again.” Simon found a makeup mirror in his pocket, a round clamshell design. On opening it, he found it was engraved – the name 'Elizabeth' was faintly visible on the inside of the clamshell.

Simon nodded his head firmly as Fortis's face replaced his own in the mirror. “Okay. Doctor.”

* * *

Simon was glad he hadn't broken his MusicMKR in the fall off the school roof. Or the fight with those zombie... things. Strumming at it in ukulele mode helped keep him calm as he followed the holographic map his PET projected in front of him.

It was dark out. Gone midnight, surely, although Simon felt relatively well-rested. It was very different, seeing Locksmouth like this. There were lights everywhere, of course, making it still quite easy to navigate, but the sky was an inky black dotted with what looked like thousands of stars.

“Hey Fortis, shouldn't there be... less stars?” Simon asked the mirror taped to the side of his PET. “Doesn't having lots of light at night, like, drown it out or something?”

“I'unno. You're the real person here,” Fortis responded.

It took Simon almost half a minute to realise something was wrong. “Fortis, are you okay?” Simon could see Fortis's face in the mirror – a perfect reflection of Simon's own, although instead of brown and white fur, Fortis simply had shiny, inklike skin, neon orange in colour. His eyes, when open, were a shiny, violently vibrant green.

“Oh, no, it's nothing. I'm just an alien, not a real person, why should my feelings matter?” the reflection responded.

This gave Simon pause. His sneakers continued to thump along the grassy path as he thought of a response. “Why would my imaginary friend be an alien?”

“Well for a start there's no reason your imaginary friend couldn't be an alien. The entire point is they can be anything!” Fortis responded, sounding agitated. “Si, look, I'm...” He gave a sigh. “It was easier just letting you think I was an imaginary friend. You seemed so happy to have one! I'd hoped I'd never have to... tell you the truth. That they wouldn't find me here.”

They came to a crossroads. Checking his map, Simon took a right, heading further toward the middle of the dome. Simon noticed that the buildings were getting shorter. Was that because they were getting closer to the inner ringway?

“About, like, ten years ago, I found this planet while running away from my kind's... uh, queen, I guess? I didn't want to be a soldier anymore. I came here, and... I guess instinctively I just grabbed the, um, the closest person I could find. We need hosts in this dimension, y'know? So I just kinda...”

Fortis trailed off. “Look, I'm sorry. I should've... just taking hosts was what we were used to, yeah? It was hard to... break the habit?”

Simon stopped. For a moment Fortis thought something was wrong before realising they had just reached their destination. Above them, a large sign read 'Locksmouth Medical Centre'. “Oh. The hospital,” said Simon. “We've been here before, right?”

“Uh... I think so? You got clipped by a car that one time. Mom went mad worrying, but you didn't even need dermal regeneration or anything. C'mon, let's go. There's probably someone still on call right now, right?”

* * *

The doors took a bit of work to open. They were supposed to open automatically, but there was no power. The lack of power extended to the lights inside the hospital, as well. Simon bunched up his shoulders as he entered, using his PET as a flashlight. “H-hello?”

His tentative greeting was swallowed up by the darkness. This place seemed huge to Simon. The distance from the door to the front desk he could barely see in the gloom, even with the light from his PET, seemed like a gaping chasm. He couldn't see the floor except right in front of him, so for all he knew it could be a gaping chasm – he'd seen enough today to just assume anything was likely.

Carefully, tentatively, Simon made his way over to the desk, making sure to illuminate the ground ahead of him as he did. He tried to just focus on what was ahead of him, ignoring his periphery. No scary darkness here, no sir.

After what felt like an age, he ran into the check in desk at the other side of the room, grasping it as if for dear life. His heart was racing. What was wrong with him? He wasn't afraid of the dark! Being afraid of the dark was stupid. After all, there was no such thing as monsters-

Oh. Okay.

Simon gave himself a few minutes to calm down. He tried those breathing exercises his therapist had suggested. Breathe in. Count to three. Breathe out. They usually seemed to work. He didn't want to close his eyes, though, so they just kept darting around the dark room as he worked on calming himself down.

His eyes stopped at the screen of the check in terminal next to him. It was on! Had it been on when he got here? Surely he'd have noticed the light. On the screen, blinking, was a chat window. Did hospital computers usually have IM programs on them? Wouldn't the doctors just use their PETs?

---
Rubberfly: Hey, kid!
Rubberfly: Take the stairs to your left, up two flights, take a right, third door on your left.
Rubberfly: Hurry up! One of those purple things is down the hall!
---

Simon stared at the screen for a few moments.

---
Rubberfly: I'm serious, get a move on!
---

Simon quickly swiveled in place, and bolted for the stairs.

* * *

The journey up the stairs was a harrowing one. Not only were the lights still out, but Simon could swear he heard muffled screams and shuffling feet behind every door. His hand clutched the railing as he climbed, counting the steps even though he didn't know how many there were meant to be. He kept his light off, so as not to attract any monsters.

Stumbling onto the second landing, Simon hurried over to the door and opened it a crack to peek through. He strained his ears, tilting them around as far as they would go, and squinted into the darkness.

After what felt like more than a minute – although his PET insisted was only ten seconds – Simon made a break for it, bolting through the door and heading left – before quickly doubling back and heading right instead. He counted doors.

One.

Two.

Three. That one!

And, slam! He ran headlong into it. It didn't even budge.
Simon stood there in horror. Had... had he gotten the wrong door? He was just about to turn and run back down to the computer to check when the door flung itself open and a pair of grey arms grabbed Simon and dragged him in!

Simon felt that strange, dreamlike feeling again as he saw the gray limbs wrap around him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that weird inklike substance creeping up his own arms... but, wait, it was orange. What?

He heard a confused gasp. “Gah! Kid, calm the heck down, okay?” Looking up, he saw a face with pure yellow eyes and... wait. Didn't those grey things have black eyes? Or grey eyes? Not yellow, he was pretty sure. And they didn't have black hair with red highlights. And they didn't have gigantic-

Okay well maybe some of them had gigantic boobs.

“Shelly Iverson??” Simon said incredulously.

“In the rubbery matte grey flesh!” the butterfly responded with a slight grin, before promptly letting him go. She leaned close. “I don't think anyone saw it but don't, like... 'ink over' like that around these guys, okay?” Simon just gave her a confused look, trying his darndest to look her in those pretty compound eyes instead of her cleavage.

Simon opened his mouth to respond, before a scraping of metal against tiles made him whip around to face the door again – only to see it was just a giant wall of green muscle moving something very heavy in front of the door. It took Simon a few steps back to realise the person he was staring at was a crocodile.

When the crocodile noticed Simon was staring, he gave a cheery thumbs-up. “Nothing's getting past that, kid.” Simon offered a shaky, forced smile. He could see the man's eyes flick to the green band around Simon's left arm.

Even Simon could recognise the awkward split-second pause.

It was something he got a lot. The moment people realise they were meant to treat him differently, they always took a few moments to readjust their mental gears. He knew, intellectually, that they were trying to be nice. He still hated it.

Simon took a deep breath, then took in his surroundings. This looked like a doctor's office, all right. There was a desk in the corner, with a terminal and many, many drawers. The metal object blocking the door was a cabinet of some sort, although it was facing the door so he couldn't see what was in it. There were four people here – Shelly Iverson, that huge crocodile, a bat lady, and a rabbit guy. Teenager? Young adult? He couldn't tell.

That bat lady looked familiar...

“D-doctor?” Simon attempted, hesitating. Oh God no it couldn't be her, it had to just be another bat lady who was coincidentally inside a hospital-

“Hm?” Dr. Diane Masterson looked up from her PET. “Oh! I'm so sorry, I didn't even notice- yes, hello. Dr. Masterson. What was your name again?”

“S-Simon, ma'am,” he responded, standing up straighter. “Um. I, um.” Simon closed his eyes and took a breath. “So my school got attacked by monsters and I fell off the roof but I was fine and I ran away and I came to the place where all the officers are and those grey people came out of nowhere and they grabbed me and I shouted at them and they let go of me and I fell and hit my head on a rock and I woke up and it was dark and I think I have a concussion because my head really hurts and isn't it a bad sign if you pass out after hitting your head so I-”

“Woah! Slow down!” the doctor exclaimed, causing Simon to immediately shut his mouth. Everyone was staring at him. His ears droops and he slouched down a bit, trying to make himself smaller.

“You hit your head and passed out?” Simon nodded. “Okay. You were right to come find me. You seem fine to me, but we should check anyway. Could you take a seat?”

Simon nodded his head again, sitting in the chair next to the desk and trying not to look at anyone. She reached into a desk drawer, rummaged around, and then closed it again. She frowned. “This... isn't actually my office. I'm sure he keeps it somewhere...” Another drawer, another rummage. “Ah-HA.” The doctor retrieved a matte black device, around the dimensions of a deck of playing cards.

With an almost-imperceptible 'snap' – Simon was confident only he and the doctor even had the aural range to hear it – the doctor separated the device into eight separate plates. “Sit up, please,” the doctor prompted, holding up two of the plates next to Simon's head. As her hands came away, Simon flinched, expecting them to drop – but they just hovered there an inch away from his temples.

Reaching up with another pair, she left them floating under the back of his skull. The third pair found themselves hovering near his crown, while the final pair were set hovering behind the top of the rear of his skull.

“Hold still, please,” the doctor continued, as she tapped something into her PET's screen. The floating 'cards' began to rotate slowly. Simon sat stock still for what felt like hours, but the process only really took a minute to complete. The doctor deftly removed the 'cards' from their positions as she looked at the results on her PET.

“Hmm. I'd have to run this through the mainframe to be totally sure, but from what I can see you have some... let's call it 'bruising'. A few cells deep... Nothing serious. You're fine, sweetie.” The doctor gave him her most reassuring smile. “If you'd left it another eight hours I wouldn't have been able to tell anything was wrong.”

Simon sighed with relief, flopping down in the chair and finally taking his eyes off the doctor – only to notice the rabbit man – not a teenager now that he had a better look – was only about a foot away, looking at him with an expression Simon couldn't read.

“So you said a bunch of those grey zombie things grabbed you, you yelled at them and they let you go... right?” Simon nodded. “And when you woke up... they were gone, huh?” Simon gave another nod, tilting his head slightly in confusion.

The rabbit leaned in close. “So... how do we know you're not infected?”
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